Alicization Beginning

  Two nights had passed since the nightmare in the cave beneath the End Mountains. With Eugeo on my right shoulder—having been revived with Selka’s sacred arts—and the head of the goblin captain slung over my left, we returned to Rulid far past sundown. The adults were gathered in the square, debating whether to form a search party, as we arrived. After the initial wave of relieved outcry, there came a thunderous scolding from Elder Gasfut and Sister Azalia. The unthinkable situation of three youths breaking the village laws seemed to have thrown the adults into a panic.

  But that lasted only until I thrust the severed head under their noses. When they saw Ugachi’s hideous head—larger than ours, with yellowed eyes and ugly, jagged teeth—they fell silent at first, then erupted into greater shock.

  After that, Eugeo and Selka explained about the goblin band camping out in the northern cave and how they were probably scouts from the land of darkness. The elders wanted to laugh it off as the overactive imagination of children, but the presence of the monstrous head the likes of which none of them had ever seen prevented them from dismissing our story. The discussion turned to the defense of the village, and we were released to drag our weary feet back home.

  In my room at the church, Selka tended to my wounded shoulder, and then I collapsed into sleep. Both Eugeo and I were exempt from working the next day, and I took that opportunity to stay in bed. By the time I woke up after the second night in bed, the pain and fatigue were entirely gone.

  After breakfast, the similarly hearty-looking Eugeo and I headed for the forest, where he had just finished his first set of fifty swings.

  I looked at the ax in my hand while he sat down a short distance away.

  “Say, Eugeo, do you remember…when the goblin in the cave slashed you…? You said something strange. That I was friends with you and Alice years ago…”

  He didn’t answer right away. After a long silence, a pleasant breeze rustled the nearby leaves, and his voice seemed to hang on to the tail end of the wind.

  “…I remember. It’s not possible…but for some reason, I remembered it very clearly then. You, Alice, and I were born and raised together in this village…and on the day Alice got taken away, you were with us…”

  “…I see,” I replied, and fell into brooding.

  You might explain it as memory confusion in an extreme situation. If Eugeo’s mind and personality were made of a fluctlight just like mine, it was possible that in the moment of life and death, his mental banks made a few mistaken connections.

  But the problem was that I’d experienced the same memory confusion at the same moment in time. When I saw Eugeo dying before my eyes, I had a vivid sensation of growing up with him in Rulid Village—along with memories of Alice, the golden-haired girl whom I’d never met.

  It was impossible. I had very clear and detailed memories of living in Kawagoe City of Saitama Prefecture as Kazuto Kirigaya, with a sister named Suguha, up until the day I woke up in this world. I couldn’t believe that my background was fictional. I didn’t want to.

  Was this phenomenon just a kind of shared hallucination between Eugeo and me in that instant and nothing more?

  But that left one thing without an explanation. While Selka’s sacred art attempted to save Eugeo’s life by transferring my life to his, I felt a fourth presence with my fading wits. Someone said, Kirito, Eugeo, I’m waiting at the top of Central Cathedral.

  I couldn’t simply claim that voice was the product of my exhausted mind. I had never heard the term Central Cathedral before this. I had never even heard of, much less been to, a place by that name in any world, real or virtual.

  So the voice had to actually be coming from someone else, not me, Eugeo, or Selka. Was it a stretch to suggest that it was Alice, the girl taken from the village six years earlier? And if so, was this impossible past where I grew up with Eugeo and Alice in Rulid also real…?

  I decided to stop thinking in circles about what had filled my head since yesterday morning and said, “Eugeo, when Selka used the sacred arts on you in the cave, did you hear someone’s voice?”

  This time, his reply was quick. “Nope, I was completely unconscious. Did you hear something, Kirito?”

  “No…just my imagination. Forget it. Well, I’ve got to get to work. I’m shooting for at least forty-five hits.”

  I faced the Gigas Cedar, banishing the swirling thoughts that plagued me. My hands gripped the ax, and my mind dedicated all its concentration to the task at hand.

  The ax followed the precise trajectory I envisioned, striking the exact middle of the crescent-shaped cut in the tree.

  Our quota of a thousand swings for the morning session ended thirty minutes earlier than it usually did. We had barely any fatigue and required very little rest. The number of clean hits was far more than last week, and if it wasn’t my imagination, it actually looked like the cut in the giant tree was deeper than before.

  Eugeo stretched with palpable satisfaction and suggested that we take an early lunch, sitting down on his usual root. I joined him, and he pulled two of the same old rolls out of the cloth and tossed them to me.

  I caught one in each hand, grimacing at the stony toughness of them, and said, “If only the bread had softened up, the way the ax is lighter now.”

  “Ha-ha-ha,” Eugeo laughed, taking a big bite and shrugging. “Sadly, it seems to be the same as before. Anyway…I wonder why the ax seems so light all of a sudden.”

  “Who can say?” I replied, but truthfully, I had a good idea from when I’d checked out my own window last night. My Object Control Authority, System Control Authority, and maximum life were all much higher than before.

  I was pretty sure I knew why. By driving off that goblin brigade—in other words, completing a difficult quest—I had undergone what a normal VRMMO would call a “level-up.” I was not in any hurry to repeat the process, but at least I’d been rewarded for braving that dangerous battle.

  This morning I’d asked Selka about it, and she, too, had claimed that, oddly enough, she was now much better at the sacred arts she’d struggled with just last week. Although she hadn’t taken part in the battle, the level-up effect made sense if you presumed that the three of us were treated as a party.

  I suspected that, like mine, Eugeo’s Object Control Authority had risen to around forty-eight. There was no way I wasn’t going to try my idea again.

  I rushed to finish my two rolls of bread and got to my feet. I strode over to a large knot in the Gigas Cedar’s trunk, feeling Eugeo’s eyes on me as he chewed, and pulled out the Blue Rose Sword from where we’d left it the other day.

  I grabbed the leather package and tried to lift it, half-certain I was right and half praying I was.

  “Whoa…!”

  I nearly tipped backward, and carefully steadied myself. The overloaded barbell weight that I remembered had now shrunk to that of a thick metal pipe instead.

  It still put strain on my wrist. But if anything, that weight was now comforting, reminiscent of the swords that I used so lovingly in the later stages of old Aincrad.

  I undid the string that bound the leather and squeezed the hilt of the beautiful sword. As Eugeo looked on with the bread stuck in his mouth, I gave him a little grin and drew the blade with a spine-tingling shinng!

  Unlike its bucking bronco routine of the other day, the Blue Rose Sword settled into my palm with all the grace of a sheltered lady. It truly was a stunning weapon. The sticky texture of the white leather grip, the translucent cast of the blade that trapped the light in intoxicating patterns, the fine decoration of rose vines—these things could not be represented in the old-fashioned polygonal way. It made perfect sense that old Bercouli would have tested a dragon to steal a sword like this.

  “W-wait, Kirito…You can lift that sword now?” Eugeo asked, stunned. I swiped it back and forth to show him.

  “The bread isn’t any softer, but it looks like this sword is lighter, at least. Watch this.”

  I faced the Gigas Cedar and cr
ouched, drawing back my right leg to face sideways and pulling the sword straight back at level height to maximize rotation. When I held it there, the sword began glowing a faint blue.

  “Seii!”

  I shot forward. The system added the velocity as I intended, hurtling the sword with tremendous speed and precision in the one-handed sword attack Horizontal.

  The Blue Rose Sword flashed like sideways lightning, striking the target with pinpoint accuracy and tremendous impact. The Gigas Cedar’s massive bulk rattled, and the birds gathered in the branches nearby all took flight.

  It was so satisfying to indulge in the feeling of body and blade being one again. I followed the line of my right arm with my eyes, down to where the bluish-silver blade was stuck halfway into the blackened tree.

  Eugeo’s eyes and mouth bulged open. The half-eaten piece of bread fell from his hands and landed on the moss. But the woodcutter boy wasn’t even aware it had happened.

  “…Kirito…was that…a sword art?”

  Well, well. That suggested that the concept of sword techniques did exist here—though I didn’t know if he was referring to system-designated “sword skills” or something more organic. I put the sword back into its sheath and chose my words carefully.

  “Yeah…I think so.”

  “That means…before the god of darkness spirited you away, your Calling must have been a man-at-arms…or even a sentinel at a larger town. I mean, they only teach official sword arts to garrison sentinels.”

  Eugeo’s green eyes sparkled with excitement as he spoke, chattering much faster than usual for him. In that instant, I realized that despite being a woodcutter and doing his Calling for six years without complaint, what Eugeo’s soul cried out to be was a swordsman. His admiration for the sword and thirst to control it at will were etched into the deepest parts of his heart.

  He approached me on stumbling feet and looked me in the eyes. His voice trembled.

  “Kirito…what style of swordsmanship do you use? Have you forgotten the name…?”

  I thought it over briefly, then shook my head. “No, I remember. My sword is the Aincrad Style.”

  The name just came to me, of course. But once I said it, I realized that it couldn’t be called anything else. All my skill had been learned and honed in that flying fortress.

  “Ain…crad…Style,” he repeated, then nodded. “It’s a strange name. I’ve never heard of it, but I suppose it might be the name of your teacher or the town where you lived…Kirito, will…”

  He looked down and mumbled. But when his head rose again a few seconds later, there was powerful intent in his eyes.

  “Will you teach me your Aincrad Style swordfighting? Of course, I’m not a soldier or even a village guard…so it might be breaking some rule somewhere…”

  “Is there a verse in the Taboo Index or the Basic…Imperial Laws that forbids a non-soldier from training with a sword?” I asked quietly.

  Eugeo bit his lip and muttered, “There’s no verse like that…but holding multiple Callings at once is forbidden. It’s only people with man-at-arms or sentinel Callings who train with swords. So if I start training…it might be seen as neglecting my own Calling…”

  His shoulders fell, but his hands were balled into fists that trembled with the tension in his arms.

  I could practically see the battle raging inside him. All these people living in the Underworld, these artificial fluctlights mass-produced somehow by Rath, all shared one trait that the people of the real world did not have.

  It was my belief that they could not disobey the higher rules written into their consciousness. They were incapable of breaking the Axiom Church’s Taboo Index, the Basic Imperial Law of the Norlangarth Empire tasked with managing the realm, and even the village standards of Rulid passed down through the years. They couldn’t do it.

  That was why Eugeo had to subdue for six long years his raging desire to rush to save his friend Alice. He suppressed his own feelings and swung his ax—against a tree that would never be felled so long as he lived.

  But now, for the first time, he was attempting to carve his own path. Perhaps his request to learn how to use a sword was not just out of a childhood dream but something much deeper…A means to gain power in the pursuit of his ultimate goal: saving Alice from captivity.

  I watched Eugeo tremble in silence and thought, Hang in there, Eugeo. Don’t give up—don’t give in to what binds you. Take a step…take your first step. You’re a swordsman.

  The blond-haired boy suddenly looked up as though he heard me. His pristine green eyes pierced my own, shining with intent. Through gritted teeth, he rasped, “But…but I…want to be…strong. So that…I never make…the same mistake again. To get back…what I’ve lost. Kirito…teach me how to use a sword.”

  Something powerful welled up in my chest, and I had to fight it down to maintain control. I grinned and told him, “All right. I’ll teach you everything I know. But the training will be harsh.”

  I let my smile turn impish and held out a hand. Eugeo’s mouth softened at last, and he clasped it.

  “That’s just what I’m hoping for. In fact…it really is what I’ve wanted…for ever and ever.”

  His head dipped again, and a few clear drops fell, catching the sunlight. He stepped forward before I could even register surprise and thudded his forehead against my shoulder. I felt his whisper through my body more than heard it.

  “I just…figured it out. I’ve been waiting for you, Kirito. Waiting here in the forest for six long years for you to come…”

  “…Yeah.”

  My own voice was barely audible. I reached around and thumped him lightly on the back with my left hand, still holding the sword in it.

  “I’m pretty sure that I woke in this forest…in order to meet you, Eugeo.”

  I hardly even recognized that I had said the words, but I was certain they were the truth.

  The Gigas Cedar—steel giant, tyrant of the forest—toppled without much fanfare just five days after I began training Eugeo in the ways of the Aincrad School.

  Mostly, it was because the tree made for the perfect practice dummy. With each demonstration of Horizontal and Eugeo’s subsequent practice attempts, the slice in the tree’s trunk grew visibly deeper. The momentous event occurred when the cut was about 80 percent of the way through the tree.

  “Seyaa!”

  Eugeo hit the trunk with a perfectly executed horizontal slice, and it let out an eerie creaking the likes of which it had never made before.

  We looked at each other in shock, glanced up at the branches of the Gigas Cedar far overhead, and froze in place. It was falling, very slowly, toward us.

  In fact, it produced the illusion that the tree was not falling on top of us but that the ground was tilting forward. Such was the unreality of the sight of a thirteen-foot-wide tree giving in to gravity and toppling over.

  The two and a half feet of trunk still connected—eighty cens, in this world’s measurement—was unable to bear the force of the rest, and it splintered and sprayed flecks like charcoal. The tree’s dying wail was louder than the force of ten consecutive thunderbolts, and the sound carried through the center of town all the way to the guard outpost at the northern end of the village, from what we were told.

  We screamed and split in different directions. Ever so slowly, the black mass split the orange of the late afternoon sky and finally crashed to earth. The thunderous impact threw me high into the air, and when I landed on my rump, my life went down by about fifty points.

  “I’m amazed…I didn’t realize there were so many people here,” I mumbled, taking the mug of apple ale from Eugeo’s outstretched hand.

  Red fires ringed the center square of Rulid, illuminating the faces of the people gathered within it. Beside the fountain, an impromptu troupe of musicians played a jolly waltz with hide drums, very long flutes, and an instrument that looked like a set of bagpipes. The stomping and clapping of the people dancing along swirled up into the open
sky.

  I sat at a table off to the side, keeping time with my foot, possessed by a strange urge to leap into the midst of the people and join in the dancing.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many villagers in one place, either. There’s even more people here than during the Great Solemnity prayer at the end of the year,” Eugeo said, smiling. I held out my mug and we shared yet another toast. The bubbling cider-like drink was the weakest kind in the village, but downing a long swig of it was enough to make my face hot.

  When the village elder and other dignitaries learned of the tree’s fall, they had no choice but to convene a village meeting, right after the previous one last week. They came together and argued passionately about what should be done with Eugeo the Carver and me.

  Frighteningly enough, many argued that we should actually be punished for completing the task of cutting down the tree a whole nine centuries ahead of schedule, but at the merciful suggestion of Elder Gasfut, a village-wide celebration was arranged, and Eugeo would be dealt with as the law dictated.

  I couldn’t actually tell what the law dictated in this particular case. I asked Eugeo what it meant, but he just laughed and said I would find out soon enough.

  Based on that reaction, it seemed clear that he wasn’t going to be persecuted. I drained my mug, picked up a meat skewer dripping with juices from a nearby plate, and took a massive bite.

  In fact, all I’d eaten since coming to this world was that dreadful hard bread and the weak vegetable soup at the church—this was the first real meat I’d had. The tender beef substitute, slathered in its rich sauce, was so succulent, savory, and flavorful that I considered it worth cutting down the Gigas Cedar for this taste alone.

  Of course, all was not well. In fact, I felt now that we had arrived only at the very start. I glanced over at the Blue Rose Sword, hanging proudly on Eugeo’s belt.

  Over the last five days, he had used the Gigas Cedar as a practice target for the basic One-Handed Sword skill Horizontal. As the impromptu “Aincrad Style” name would suggest, it was a system-recognized sword skill from the old Sword Art Online VRMMO.